Joomla - get array of article IDs, retrieve text, and link to them

Question

I'm building a Joomla module that can get an array of all articles on the site -- regardless of category -- then identify the category, retrieve intro text and title, and display the titles, categories, and intro text of the most recent two articles in each category in a tiled layout. I have the layout done, but I don't know where to start on the rest. Is it possible?

I'm not averse to getting the articles from category blogs, but I'm not sure if that's possible.

Answer 1

There is the best way to retrieve the articles:

$jcontent=JControllerLegacy::getInstance('Content');
$jarticles=$jcontent->getModel('Articles');
$jarticles->getState();
$jarticles->setState('filter.article_id', $ids);
$jarticles->setState('list.limit', count($ids));
$jarticles->setState('filter.published', 1);
$articles=$jarticles->getItems();

This code was tested and, as for me, this is the best way - it uses Joomla abstractions to retrieve the articles, it uses Joomla caching and is not dependent on database structure.

Answer 2

This is code is not tested, you may need to check and make minor modifications.

Method 1 : In this you need to query the category details again from the category id you get inside the loop.

$db = JFactory::getDbo();

$query = $db->getQuery(true);
$query->select('*');
$query->from('#__content');

$db->setQuery((string)$query);
$res = $db->loadObjectList();

foreach($res as $r){
    //query category details also here
    echo '<h3>'.$r->title.'</h3>';
    echo $r->introtext;
}

Method 2 : In this method you are supposed to get both content and category details in one query. In the select query you need to include the field names which you need.

$db = JFactory::getDbo();
$db->setQuery('SELECT #__content.title as contentTitle, #__categories.title as catTitle FROM #__content, #__categories WHERE #__content.catid = #__categories.id'); 
$details = $db->loadObjectList();
print_r(details);